Descent Into Madness

Wow. Blogging again and stuff. I feel like there may be perhaps 3 people who still would read this and even fewer who care about what I'm going to say. Also, one of them is my mom and out of the country. The only reason why I feel this post is negative is because when people ask, "How was Atlanta?" I want to give them a more coherent answer than the following: "Sucks that we lost but I got to drink beer and burn stuff." Yeah so if I wasn't clear I went to Atlanta for the Final Four. Syracuse had made it for the first time since 2003, and after years of heartbreak at the end of every basketball season of my college career we had a chance to do something great. Therefore I shelled out the 40 bucks, hopped in a car, and started the 16 hour drive down there. The following is a vague timeline of the weekend's events.

Friday

• 2:00 PM - depart Syracuse towards Utica with a car, a trunk full of snacks, and a pocket full of dreams
• 2:10 PM - my future employer sends me a time sensitive email that I have been waiting for the last month and a half to receive 10 minutes after I am without internet for 4 days
• 3:00 PM - we reach Utica and pick up the last member of our party and turn south to drive until we can't drive no mo

Saturday

• 1:00 AM - arrival in Middle of Nowhere, VA to sleep at grandma's house (not mine, but I'm sure she's somebody's grandma)
• 6:00 AM - wake-up call, bacon, biscuits, grits, time to attempt to ford the river before one of our party dies of dysentery
• 9:45 AM - I get pulled over for speeding. This is one I'd like to extrapolate upon as that does not really tell you the whole story. I have some diagrams I'd like to show you.
  
  So if you imagine the black line is a road, there was a 60 MPH limit for a while, set my cruise control, whatever. Then, for pretty much the length of a car, the speed limit dropped to 45. Also as luck would have it, there was a police officer camping out apparently concentrating on nothing else in the world all day other than this area of road. He pulls me over and I managed to remember a fun direct quote from him.
  
  
  "I don't know what they do in New York but down here in Virginia that's reckless driving. You can be arrested for that. You're lucky not to be face down on the hood in cuffs right now."
  
  
  Following this, he painted me a verbal picture of Virginia highways.
  
  
  My view of Virginia highways:
  
  
  
   
  The officer's view of Virginia highways: 
   
  So after the fun experience of getting my first speeding ticket, we pressed onward.
  • 1:00 PM - roadwork
  • 2:00 PM - roadwork
  • 2:30 PM - roadwork
  • 2:31 PM - roadwork
  • 2:47 PM - roadwork
  • 5:00 PM - arrive at campsite 2 hours late and set up the biggest tent you've ever seen
  • 6:30 PM - arrive at Georgia Dome 15 minutes after Louisville vs. Wichita St tip-off
  • 6:31 PM - we begin our quest to find our tickets. We are told to go next door to the conference center where we are told to look for a loading dock which doesn't exist where we are told to go to will call where we are told to go to the box office where we are told to go up a 3 story escalator where we are told to go down 3 stories of escalators where we are told to go to the conference center basement.
  • 7:30 PM - we swipe our cards and enter the student holding area.
    
    
    
    
    Note that the game was halfway done by the time we got here. Note the fact that there is nothing to look at but three concrete walls. Note the fact that seating is based not on when you arrived or who you came in with but the amount of games you went to during the year. Note that had I sat where I was supposed to, I would have been two sections away from any person I had ever met before. Note that the NCAA hates kids and kicks puppies. Seriously. Here we are being held in a dungeon waiting to go into a basketball game and they can't give us a TV? A radio broadcast of the game? Mimes acting out the play by play? NCAA 1, Fun and Happiness 0.
  • 8:15 PM - we are let out of the dungeon and traverse the netherworld of the Georgia Dome to reach our seats for the last 16 minutes of the game before ours. 
  • 10:god knows when PM - Syracuse vs. Michigan tips off. This is my view. See any players? Me neither.
    
    
    
    
    This is where I'll discuss the game so if it's too hard for you to relive, you can look away or close this window or set your computer on fire or something. Ok so number one, did anybody besides CJ Fair f***ing show up? I know we're trying to showcase him because nobody believes he is our best player but that doesn't mean we need to pull everyone else and play one on five. And don't get me started on the fact that Michigan made 3 threes from far enough away that they had to call a cab for the basketball to get to the hoop. And when did we get our first rebound? I remember it being at about 15 minutes left in the half because before then the best thing we could do after a missed shot was let Michigan get it first and hope they threw it out of bounds. First half dreadful. Second half we decided to try rebounding a bit, Triche and MCW got their heads out of their asses and started trying. Finally we claw our way back to within a couple points and Southerland launches his 57th three of the night...missing for the 57th time. Later within two, Triche drives, runs over a guy, and gets hit with a charge on a moving defender and fouls out. MCW tries to take a charge at halfcourt which hasn't been called in the defender's favor since a T-Rex charged a triceratops. Foul 4 for MCW, foul 5 in about 20 seconds when a Michigan player falls down about 6 feet away from him. Not really sure what happened but we all know MCW has telekinesis so he probably did foul the guy. This leaves us with Cooney running the point. Last play is a Cooney drive. Miss obviously, game over. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth which we tried to wash out with beer but apparently in Georgia they stop selling beer at midnight. Yeah. Terrific day.
  
  Sunday
  
  • 11:30 AM - arrive at the Philips Center for the D3 and D2 championship games. Wonderful surprise, no idea these were happening at all. 
  • 12:30 PM - D3 - Amherst University vs. University of Mary Hardin-Baylor tips off. Amherst prevails behind guard Willy Workman's 14 points, 10 rebounds, and impeccable work ethic. Amherst's nickname is the Lord Jeffs, by the way. Some dude named Jeff was the Duke of Amherst, I don't know.
  • 4:00 PM - D2 - Drury University vs. Metro State University of Colorado tips off. Drury makes a furious comeback from 17 down behind the efforts of Cool Hair Sports Goggles, Beardy McBearderson, and a couple of white guys shooting threes. They win by 1 and get away with five fouls on the last play because the refs are bored and want to go home.
  • 7:00 PM - we enter a bar full of Louisville fans watching Louisville women's basketball. Some guys who work for the NCAA start berating us about taking shots of Patron and Bloody Mary mix with them. One asks me if the S on my hat stands for stupid. I reply that no, in fact, it does not.
  • 11:00 PM - realization that beers and smores are the most glorious combination of flavors while burning stuff (safely and responsibly of course)
  
  Monday
  
  • 8:00 AM - Step one: start driving. There is no step two.
   

So as you can see it was a wicked busy weekend. It was a lot of fun, a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of burning stuff. Most of all, it was a hell of a lot of driving. I must have spent about 40 hours in the car. Moral of the story: make money so next time we make the Final Four I can charter a jet, sit in a box, and stay in a penthouse.